When diagnosing or treating cancer, a less-invasive procedure often leads to better outcomes and fewer risks. Roswell Park’s newly expanded Endoscopy Center offers patients this option with minimally invasive, highly accurate methods of assessing and treating gastrointestinal cancers, cancers of the airway and lungs, and benign digestive conditions.
Endoscopy is a procedure that enables physicians to diagnose, stage or treat cancer by using a very small camera in a thin tube. The tube is inserted in the body and the camera provides highly detailed, close-up images. Endoscopic equipment also can be used to perform biopsies or remove tumors without traditional surgery, often leading to better outcomes, faster recovery and fewer side effects.
Roswell Park has recently hired five new endoscopy professionals to its Center, including two advanced gastroenterology physicians who assist patients with cancers of the esophagus, stomach and intestines; and three physicians who are interventional pulmonologists, experts in cancers of the airway and lungs.
The new Endoscopy Center offers some services that are not available anywhere else in Western New York, such as endoscopic ultrasounds. These tests help oncologists more accurately diagnose and stage different gastrointestinal cancers, including pancreatic cancer. Colonoscopies are also offered to screen for colon cancer.
Another key service provided by the Endoscopy Center is interventional pulmonology—using endoscopy to diagnose and/or treat lung cancer or premalignant disease. Lung cancer is often diagnosed at a later stage and therefore has poorer survival rates. Endoscopy is helping to improve those rates by enabling doctors to closely investigate nodules in the lung that may indicate an early stage of cancer.
The Endoscopy Center features a fluoroscopy unit—a state-of-the-art x-ray machine that offers high resolution, digital images to help provide the most accurate diagnosis possible. The Center also has a dedicated pathology unit. When a diagnostic test such as a biopsy is performed, pathologists are right within the Center to provide quick, efficient and thorough assessments of the findings.
The new Endoscopy Center offers a valuable combination of skilled and experienced oncologists, compassionate staff, and the latest and most accurate equipment and facilities. By providing these newly expanded services, our goal is to achieve improved outcomes and outstanding care for cancer patients.
Learn more about the newly expanded Endoscopy Center at Roswell Park.
